ROMM - The Hypocrite

He had spent the formative years of his youth living by the dictum "You can't have the cake and eat it too". In a world corrupted by the gradual amortization of morals, he grappled on to his much cherished principles. When he was young, things were simple, and it wasn't always difficult to do and say the same things. In his adolescent days, ignorance was bliss and he was naive enough to believe that you could always do the best for the society while being righteous and consistent. Life chugged along at a metronomic, yet cheerful pace, as he maintained his sangfroid.

However, the above notion was dealt a death knell when he aged. As he reached a position of prominence - one where his actions and decisions could actually affect things around him, he ran into a serious conflict of interest. In umpteen situations, his well thought good natured actions would be circumvented by his past choices. His predicament was - Is it better if actions A & B are both wrong, yet consistent in their intent? or Is it better if actions A & B were inconsistent, which would make at least one of them right?. In the former case he was being true to his principles, but his outcome was not favorable. In the latter, he was a flip-flop and a fickle minded hypocrite, but yet achieved a better end result than the former case. Should his noble intentions in instance B be judged against his sinister reputation in instance A? Should he salvage his reputation and repeat action A for B, or just swallow the ignominy of being dubbed a hypocrite and perform differently, but for the good, on B?

On deeper introspection, he realized that he could debunk the inconsistencies in most actions of every person he knew. Was this setting up a rationale for people being hypocrite? No, this was merely an observation he was suddenly made aware of. It took a while, but enlightenment finally dawned upon the confused. He realized that life is not all white and black, but rather gray, and there is definitely more than one shade of gray. Even the most righteous personalities were guilty of acting differently in different situations. They might not admit it, but it wasn't difficult to look through the veneer of righteousness to see the selfish interests that people knowingly or unknowingly perpetrate. At first, this thought disillusioned him and he felt the world around had just crashed on him. But healing began as soon as he had picked up and cleaned the shards of this aftermath. Soon he began to rebuild his confidence and groom a different school of thought.

Convinced of a new philosophy that pardoned every person in the world for being hypocrite, he no longer pondered for hours over some of the ramifications of his actions. He did what he liked and what he thought was best for everyone, without judging it in the light of his past actions. Soon he realized he could say one thing and do another as long as some of his actions which violate his preaching were actually utilized for the good. Sure, there were those critics and theorists who pointed fingers, but it took him only few minutes to unmask their hidden hypocrisy and justify his actions.

It was only a matter of time before people understood him, and more importantly, his philosophy.This brought in a renaissance of a kind. The world had been gifted with a new order, an order which freed people from the anathema of a vile adjective, and rung in a happy ending. Ironically, with the world embracing hypocrisy, there were no pretenders, instead people were just being themselves.....long live The Hypocrite!!